Updates from the 24th Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The Neurobiology of Narcolepsy

Dr. Thomas Scammell, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, is presenting an invited lecture this afternoon from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time on the subject of the “Neurobiology of Narcolepsy.”

Scammel is studying mice to gain a detailed understanding of the neurobiology of orexin, hoping that this will contribute to the development of effective therapies for patients with narcolepsy and enhance the understanding of sleep. In April his study, “Feeding-elicited cataplexy in orexin knockout mice” was published online ahead of print in the journal Neuroscience. In the Jan. 1 issue of the journal SLEEP Scammel published, “A consensus definition of cataplexy in mouse models of narcolepsy.”

In May the Sleep Education Blog reported on an important new genetic study, which suggests that narcolepsy is an autoimmune disorder. Read the full report.